Brigadier General
Randolph T. Poore

Born in Washington, DC, in 1944, Randolph T. Poore received a Regular Army commission through ROTC upon graduating from Washington and Lee University in 1966. After serving a branch-detailed assignment with the 6/562d Artillery in Germany, he embarked on his career as an Ordnance officer with D Company, 708th Maintenance Battalion, 8th Infantry Division, serving as Shop Officer then Company Commander, winning an award for Best Maintenance Company in Vth Corps. He next served in South Vietnam from 1969 to 1971 in the 173d Support Battalion of the 173d Airborne Brigade, where he maintained the best equipment readiness rate of any major unit in Vietnam.

Poore returned to the United States and earned a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alabama, followed by an assignment from 1974 to 1977 to the US Army Tank Automotive Command at Warren, Michigan, as a Research and Development Coordinator and then Executive Assistant to the Commanding General. He next completed Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then served from 1978 to 1980 in the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as Maintenance Management Officer, then as Executive Officer of the 782d Maintenance Battalion, and finally as Assistant G-4 for Plans and Operations. As Assistant G-4, he was responsible for establishing the logistics operations center for the Cuban Resettlement Operation at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. He returned to Germany in 1980 as Operations Officer and later the Chief of the Maintenance Division of the Berlin Brigade, managing a staff of 170 US military and German nationals and carrying out a major rebuild program for the Brigade's tanks and armored personnel carriers.

In 1983 Poore returned to Fort Bragg to command the 189th Maintenance Battalion, 1st Corps Support Command, a 900-Soldier battalion with a $2 million operating budget providing direct and general support to the XVIIIth Airborne Corps. His next assignment, after graduating from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1986, was Chief of the Ordnance Officer Assignment Branch at the US Army Military Personnel Center, Alexandria, Virginia, where he managed assignments for more than 4,000 Ordnance officers.

In 1987 he took command of the 7th Infantry Division's Support Command at Fort Ord, California. His 2,000 Soldiers flawlessly executed rapid-deployment training exercises to Honduras and Panama. Poore next served, from 1989 to 1991, as Assistant Commandant at the US Army Ordnance Center and School, Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Maryland. He initiated the movement of Ordnance training from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to APG; planned and executed a major School reorganization; and integrated the Army's new battle-focused training management system into the School's professional development courses.

Brigadier General Poore's final assignment, in 1991, was as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, Eighth Army, Korea, where he was succeeding in raising the munitions and logistical readiness of the command when he died unexpectedly on September 19, 1991, after 25 years of distinguished service.